| Discourse markers are indispensable language markers, which are used in daily communication. Researches on discourse markers have been widely expanded since the 1970s. Nevertheless, discourse markers in spoken language are the focus point of study; and most of the scholars study them from the perspectives of coherence and relevance.Because of the above reasons, this thesis is to analyze the textual functions of discourse markers which appear in the five texts of English versions of Reports on the Work of the Government from 2006 to 2010 with Halliday's Systemic-Functional Grammar, especially the textual function, as theoretical basis, under both quantitative and qualitative analysis. With data collection and analysis, identification and classification of discourse markers within the data are clearly shown; and textual functions of them are present in three aspects of thematic structure, information structure and cohesion. Within thematic structure, topic-changing, topic-closing, concluding, framing, evidential, topic-maintaining and topic-initiating functions are fulfilled. Under the framework of information structure, information-adding, information-predicting, importance-ordering and information-foregrounding functions are displayed. In the aspect of cohesion, elaborating, extending, enhancing and context-cohering functions are executed by discourse markers. Based on the fruit of this thesis, conclusions can be made that the same discourse markers can fulfill different textual functions in different structures and different types of discourse markers can fulfill the same textual function. These two conclusions can reflect functional diversity and overlapping of discourse markers. Therefore, the analysis of discourse markers in this thesis nails down different textual functions of them. And proper discourse markers will help interpreters of Reports on the Work of the Government and other political articles to achieve a coherent text.
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